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Re: Proliant ML350 RAID5

 
ServerHelp
Occasional Contributor

Proliant ML350 RAID5

A Proliant server is currently has RAID5 and NT 4 with two partitions C: and D: . We would like to blow away the NT installation and start fresh with 2003 configured with two partitions and I have a couple of questions:


1. Can anyone provide a "general" step by step for this?


2. Do I need to re-format or can I use the format option during install?

3. If I start the install and have windows format the existing partition will it format a c and d drive? If not how do I get two partitions?

Thanks in advance
2 REPLIES 2
Steven Clementi
Honored Contributor

Re: Proliant ML350 RAID5

1. Assuming this is a ML350 G1, please let us know if different, you would only be able to use a SMart Start 5.5 CD for assisted installation. I believe the 5.5 CD did not have an option for Windows 2003 so you may be stuck doing a Manual Installation. If so, it would be best the grab the latest Smart Array driver and put it on a floppy so that you can use it doing the 2003 install.

Basically, boot with your Windows CD, hit F6 when prompted to load the driver from floppy, continue on as a normal installation.

2. Depends on how the disk is actually set up. Since it is 1 RAID5 drive with 2 partitions, you might want to start over from scratch there as well and configure 2 logical drives instead of 1. It could make life easier in the long term, but is NOT a requirement at this point.

3. It will give you the option to delete the partitions, keep them and format them quickly or fully and or just leave the file system in place as is.


Steven
Steven Clementi
HP Master ASE, Storage, Servers, and Clustering
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Terry Hutchings
Honored Contributor

Re: Proliant ML350 RAID5

If you're just going to do a clean install of Win2003, then boot off the Windows 2003 cd (specify the controller driver using F6 if required), select the option to do an install, when it gets to the point where it asks if you want to use the existing file system, select to install over it, then select the option to reformat it with NTFS and not leave the existing file system intact.

If you delete the partition first, then it will likely not make the OS install be on C and the data on D. You should be able to leave the existing D drive in place (if you want to).
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